Friday, December 12, 2014

December 12 – Feast of Our Lady of
Guadalupe

After a prayer session at a migrant
camp in New York’s apple country, a young mother pauses on the steps of the
crowded trailer she and her husband share with three other couples. When she
feels overwhelmed by her life as an undocumented immigrant far from home, she
confides, she comes out onto these rickety steps to look for the Virgin’s star
in the night sky. Her grandmother taught her this custom in their Zapotec
village in Oaxaca. “It helps me to know that whether I am here or in Mexico, I
can see her,” she says. After a moment, she adds in a quiet yet firm voice, “She
sees me, too.”

Deirdre Cornell, American Madonna: Crossing Borders with the
Virgin Mary

Monday, October 27, 2014

Conversations
with Prof. Amy Remensnyder, author of La
Conquistadora: The Virgin Mary and War and Peace in the Old and New Worlds,
Oxford University Press, New York, 2014.

By Jeffrey Richardson

After
relating how the Spanish veneration of the Virgin Mary evolved over centuries
on the Iberian Peninsula both in peace and war, Prof. Remensnyder’s narrative
sets the stage for the Spanish entrada
in the New World. As the violent, breathtaking saga of the Conquest in the New
World unfolds in her book, we sense that indeed we have stepped onto a more
familiar shore, yet beyond the fringe of that shore is a land laced with
mysterious trails and full of secrets.

One
of the important findings from Remensnyder’s research revolves around the way
in which indigenous people of the New World came to welcome the Virgen Mary
among them.

“[Another]
surprising thing was to discover indigenous peoples accepting Mary as a
conquistador, not simply as a replacement for Native goddesses,” says
Remensnyder.

As
she had been doing for several hundred years in helping Christian armies
re-take the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims, Mary arrived in the New World
as the patron of military men. But also as in Spain, she came with two distinct
identities: Mary, the author of military victories through her support of
men-at-arms in the cause of Christianity, and Mary, the compassionate mother
figure of infinite love and forgiveness.

The
priests who would take up the all-important task of evangelizing to the
indigenous people in the Americas didn’t arrive in numbers until a quarter
century or more after the first contacts. It was the conquistadors who came
with weapons, and with Mary. Their own veneration of the Virgin compelled them
to erect shrines at every place they camped or conquered, and her dual nature
was not lost on the native onlookers.

“The
indigenous people knew her from the outset as both a conquering and a
compassionate figure,” says Remensnyder. “Over time, she didn’t simply become a
stand-in for the goddesses among the pantheon of deities vanquished by the
Europeans, she was incorporated in her own right [into their spiritual lives].”

Remensnyder
notes that as a cultural historian her task in researching and writing the book
was not to iterate all, nor prove any, of the miracles or other extraordinary
occurrences that gave rise to Mary’s emergence as a favored saint among the
warring Spaniards. Rather, she says, “I tried to understand people in their own
world, undoing notions of what we think about the past”

Additional
comments from our interviews with Dr. Remensnyder:

Did you get the
impression that Marian veneration of the conquistadors lost a little something
of its sincerity in the rarified air of the New World, in the avaricious
pursuit of gold and silver? Or put another way, given their circumstances, were
accounts of Marian veneration left by conquistadors likely to be more
self-serving than those of the Spaniards who won back the Iberian Peninsula?

It’s
easy for us in this secular age to look back at the pre-modern era and say how
easy it must have been for them to use religion to justify conquest, to justify
the pursuit of wealth and power. And while they did use religion to justify
their actions, that doesn’t mean they didn’t truly believe in the precepts of
their faith. Just think of all the treasure of the Americas that went to adorn
churches in Spain. Just last summer I went to Granada in Spain and had a chance
to see the San Juan de Dios Church, a church that is just covered in New World gold.

Can you
elaborate on the idea of indigenous peoples accepting Mary in her own right,
not simply as a replacement for native goddesses.

On
one level, the Spanish presented Mary to the New World as a powerful spiritual intercessor,
and also brought with them a hierarchical political and economic structure in
which intercession by a patron at a higher level of society was the norm. So,
Mary became a go-to intercessor in spiritual as well as temporal matters, accessible
to anyone including the indigenous peoples with little or no leverage in the
Spanish system, a way for them to cope on a daily basis with this new, imposed
colonial system.

On
perhaps a more emotional level Mary came to the indigenous peoples of the
Americas as a spiritual figure markedly different from the goddesses of their
pre-contact pantheon. While she could be stirred to anger and action, she was
more consistently kind and nurturing than some of the more complicated,
fearsome, even bloodthirsty goddesses to whom they had paid homage.

This
is not to say that Native peoples universally or immediately embraced Mary upon
the arrival of the Spaniards. Aside from the omnipresence of Spanish arms, the
waves of friars who soon followed the conquistadors strategically targeted
indigenous youth, indoctrinating them from an early age, setting up painful
generational conflicts with their elders. But again, we have to be careful to
not categorically dismiss as insincere the power of Marian veneration that grew
up among native peoples in the New World. It is interesting to note that in the
late 17th and 18th centuries there were in Mexico and
Peru a number of anti-Spanish rebellions among indigenous peoples with the
Virgin Mary at their heart. They had adopted her in a very deep way.

What if France
had colonized Mexico and Central/South America instead of Spain?

It’s
really hard to answer that. It’s true that the French had a long tradition of
Marian veneration, and included proselytizing as part of their colonial
enterprise in the New World. They even, like the Spanish, had known Mary in
peace and at war. But one key difference is that, unlike the Spanish, they
lacked the centuries-long collective experience with people of another faith
and culture in which Mary figured so prominently in framing the inter-cultural
relationship. I also wonder if the French would have been quite as intent upon
re-claiming or co-opting the indigenous spiritual space, the temple, as part of
establishing Christian domination.

Monday, July 28, 2014

Conversations
with Prof. Amy Remensnyder, author of La
Conquistadora: The Virgin Mary and War and Peace in the Old and New Worlds,
Oxford University Press, New York, 2014.

By Jeffrey Richardson

The
biggest surprise for Amy Remensnyder in researching her recently-published book
on the Virgin Mary was that which first drew her to the subject: the apparent
contradiction of Mary’s association as much with war as with peace. Recalling
her first encounter with a Madonna known as La Conquistadora, she writes:

“I
first encountered La Conquistadora in the tranquil backyard of New Mexico’s
most famous pilgrimage site, Chimayó . . . I was not a pilgrim but a tourist.
Ill at ease being a spectator to devotion, watching people in these intimate
moments as they offered fear in exchange for hope, I went outside. There, on a
shady stone wall behind the sanctuary, I found La Conquistadora. She was one
among a number of saints whose images were set into stone: Saint James, Saint
Francis, the Virgin of Guadalupe. Their shrines dwarfed the small colored
ceramic tile depicting her as a dainty Madonna clad in white and blue. Yet
clearly she had her imposing side----her name was ‘La Conquistadora,’
proclaimed the blue lettering beneath the image. Disquieted, I lingered in
front of the tile. Conjuring all the aggressive violence of warfare, ‘the
Conqueress’ hardly seemed a suitable title for the Virgin Mary, crowned with
her halo of tenderness.”

Remensnyder’s
book offers a deep and far-reaching look at this Marian dichotomy and with
great detail and cogence traces (among many other things) the evolution of Mary’s
veneration by the Christian kings, knights and faithful foot soldiers who
fought for centuries to end the Muslim occupation of the Iberian Peninsula. Indeed,
it was that long line of kings that produced another surprise for Rememsnyder.

“I
didn’t expect that I was going to write a book that was in large part about men
and masculinity,” she recalls.

The
author’s findings did not hinge solely on the prevalence of men in prominent
positons of power in social, economic and military affairs, although it
certainly was a man’s world in that
sense. However, by careful study of the writings of the day—songs, epic poems,
letters, biographical sketches, official documents and decrees—she found ample
evidence that medieval Iberian conceptualizations of Mary shaped the very
foundations of masculinity itself. Knights defending the faith were encouraged
to see the Virgin Mary as their “lady love,” to enter into a committed
relationship with her of such spiritual ecstasy and perfection than only the
language of romantic love and longing could contain it. Thus, in tracking the
centuries of Christian-Muslim conflict in Iberia, Remensnyder traces the
gossamer boundary where medieval notions of romance and chivalry touch and
intertwine the language and precepts of masculine Marian devotion in a way that
is arrestingly earthy.

“Offering
their love service to Mary, knights played the manly roles of faithful suitor
and valiant champion. They also announced their Christian virility, for
warriors often make themselves men by defending the women they cherish . . .
Wartime rhetoric and propaganda, as well as the stress of combat itself, often
encourage soldiers to imagine the women they love—whether wife, mother, or
lover—as pure and innocent icons of the values for which they fight. For a
Christian knight of medieval Iberia, what woman could more perfectly represent
the purity, innocence, and moral order he was supposed to defend than Mary,
embodiment of the Church, the monarchy, and the land?

“Our
Lady’s Christian champions could believe they owed her military service against
the Muslims because they were her vassals as well as her lovers.”

Remensnyder’s
research has produced some interesting surprises for the reader, too. Surveys
of Spanish history sometimes leave the impression that the centuries-long Muslim
occupation of Iberia was complete and continuous and only ended when Ferdinand
and Isabel drove the Saracens from Spanish shores. In fact, the epoch was
marked by intense warfare punctuated by extended periods of peace, tolerance
and lively commerce. The arenas of military action constantly shifted and
Ferdinand and Isabel were only the last in a long line of Christian rulers who had
gradually re-asserted dominion over the peninsula. Remarkably, Christian
mercenaries often fought for Muslim princes (and vice versa) and Spaniards
vying for pre-eminence fought among themselves as often as they did their
common foe.

Ferdinand
and Isabel’s success in pushing the Muslims from their last Iberian stronghold
in Granada did set the stage for imperial adventures in the new
world—adventures in which the Virgin Mary would figure prominently and in
surprising ways.

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Conversations
with Prof. Amy Remensnyder, author of La
Conquistadora: The Virgin Mary and War and Peace in the Old and New Worlds,
Oxford University Press, New York, 2014.

By Jeffrey Richardson

Raised
by parents who loved history, Amy Remensnyder may have been destined for a
career absorbed in the past, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been a few
surprises along the way. The first came just after graduation from high school
in 1978 when she went to England, traveling the country by rail. Stopping over
in Lincolnshire she went to visit the ancient Norman cathedral there and was
awestruck by the experience.

“It
was overwhelming,” Remensnyder recalls. “The cathedral was so imposing, so
majestic, so mysterious. I looked at this incredible architecture and I thought
to myself, ‘I do not understand the people who built this at all, how they did
this. Who were they?’ I’m still at
it, trying to understand medieval people.”

Remensnyder
plunged into her quest for understanding, earning a bachelor’s in history and
literature from Harvard, and completing advanced studies in Cambridge, England and
Paris, France. She added to her credentials in the field of medieval history
with a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and is now an associate professor of history at
Brown University. She is the author of two books, including the history of La
Conquistadora traditions, as well as countless academic articles.

Yet
even as she settled into her life’s work, Remensnyder’s more personal
journey—and its attendant surprises—continued. Raised in the Episcopal faith,
she later embraced atheism, a striking contrast to her scholarly encounters
with early Christianity, including the traditions and underlying beliefs of
Marian veneration and its iconography. While the images spoke more to her mind
than her heart, the winding path of inquiry was taking her into new country.

“What
I found in studying medieval religious imagery is that things mean more than what
simply appears on the surface,” says Remensnyder. “I came to sense that
medieval people, unlike so many secular modern Westerners, believed that the
world had meaning beyond the surface of things. Through these images, including
Marian figures, they found pathways, channels to that deeper meaning.”

Remensnyder’s
interest in La Conquistadora grew out of a chance encounter during a road trip
to New Mexico in the summer of 1992. Visiting the venerated Santuario at Chimayó
north of Santa Fe, she strolled the grounds, turned a corner, and came
face-to-face with the diminutive figure of New Mexico’s patroness, set
discretely in a stone wall along a quiet walkway.

“
‘Wow, what is that?,’ she recalls thinking. ‘I’ve never heard of an image of
the Virgin Mary called La Conquistadora!’ It was a startling juxtaposition of
military violence with what I’d been trained to understand as the
compassionate, benevolent Mary balancing the stern judgment of Christ.”

When
she began investigating New Mexico’s conquistadora,
she discovered there have been other Marian figures that carry the same name.
She also discovered that notwithstanding the aggressive connotation of the
title, these figures carried deeper meaning to the protagonists in Spain’s
history in both the old world and the new.

“I
started off thinking the story was going to be all about war, a one-sided story
of war and subjugation of Native peoples by the Spanish, but it was more
complex than that. It was as much about cultural exchange in the long run. In New
Mexico, for example, it was common for Christianized tribes or groups to invoke
the name of Mary, La Conquistadora in conflicts with traditional indigenous foes,” Remensnyder says.

Remensnyder
explains that her academic research of La Conquistadora was significantly
augmented in another surprising way. In 2002 she accepted an opportunity to
travel to Katmandu for a one-month retreat. There, as a participant, not just a
detached observer, she found a religious tradition comprised in large measure of
visualizing, of imagining, the Buddha.

“And
it’s the religious imagery that you meditate on,” notes Remensnyder. “So I was
suddenly having a powerful, tangible experience that strongly mirrored the
essential practice of Marian veneration with its focus on beloved images. It
really informed my research and gave me a much clearer idea of what I was
dealing with in examining La Conquistadoras and their followers down through
the ages.”

Now
a practicing Buddhist, Remensnyder put the finishing touches on her new book
last summer after more than a decade of research.

Note: The title
of Dr. Remensnyder’s book was changed slightly after a previous post on this
blog. The title as given above is correct. In an upcoming blog post we’ll
continue our visit, looking at the long lineage of La Conquistadoras and the
ways in which this veneration resembles and differs from other Marian
devotions.

North American Madonnas: Guadalupe, La Conquistadora and and More. Photos, Retablos and Ex-Votos

About American Madonnas

Welcome to American Madonnas, an exploration of art and spirituality as well as history and culture. This site is particularly focused on the Virgen of Guadalupe, known and venerated by millions as Queen of the Americas, and La Conquistadora, the small Madonna who has mothered the faithful of New Mexico and the American Southwest from her chapel in Santa Fe since the early 1600s. As we make this exploration together, we welcome your stories, not only about Guadalupe and La Conquistadora, but any other Marian figure that has been important in your life .

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Buy Cristina's Conquistadora Poster and her Other Art

Further Reading

La Conquistadora, Unveiling the History of a Six Hundred Year Old Religious Icon, by Jaima Chevalier, Sunstone Press, Santa Fe, NM, 2010.

The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, by Leonard Shlain, Penguin Books, New York, 1999.

New Mexico: An Interpretive History, by Marc Simmons, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque 1988.

About Us

Cristina Ortiz Acosta and Felipe O'Riley are sharing their interest in and experience with the history and culture of North American Madonnas. Acosta is a painter and writer, who loves to paint retablos and ex-votos celebrating North American Madonnas; O'Riley is a writer and historian with keen interest in the Hispanic history of North America.